The vagina is a musculomembranous tubular organ extending from the uterine cervix to the exterior of the body. The vaginal canal is about 9 or 10 cm long. Its lumen is generally quite small, and the walls that surround it are usually in contact with each other. Various are the organic fluids which pass through the vaginal canal during the female lifetime, such as blood, vaginal secretion fluids, amniotic fluid, etc.
An important organic fluid passing through the vaginal canal and exiting through the vaginal orifice is blood, either as a result of physiological conditions such as the menstrual period or as a result of pathological conditions such as cervical or endometrial carcinoma. The various inconveniences to women resulting from the occurrence of physiological bleeding occurring during the menstrual period have prompted attempts to regulate or control the outflow of menstrual bleeding according to the women personal and social needs. For the purpose of controlling the outflow of menstrual blood, vaginal tampons were introduced a few decades ago. Vaginal tampons are common catamenial devices made of absorbing material and insertable into the vagina by the female user. Due to their absorbing material, tampons, once inserted into the vagina, begin to absorb upon contact the blood they meet, which outflows from the cervical canal into the vagina, and function as reservoirs aiming at delaying exit of the blood from the vaginal orifice conceivably until they become saturated with blood and, in so doing, they exert a regulatory effect on the outflow of menstrual bleeding to meet womens' needs or preferences.
However, regardless of their absorbency capabilities, tampons, for various reasons, are known to allow leakage of menstrual blood at rather unpredictable time or shortly after insertion, falling short of providing the regulatory effect which is the very reason for their use. No known tampon is capable of preventing leakage of blood from the vaginal orifice, regardless of shape, size, intravaginal resting site, absorbency capabilities of the material or materials of which they are made of, etc. Blood may leak from the vaginal orifice because the tampon is too early saturated with blood or because the blood flow is disproportionately heavy for the absorbency capabilities of the inserted tampon or because the tampon does not provide an adequate sealing with the vaginal walls or orifice or for all the above reasons variously combined.
Despite the use of tampons, therefore, leakage of blood from the vaginal orifice is almost the rule during the days of the vaginal bleeding and its occurrence may result in a great deal of annoyance and inconvenience to the woman: leakage indeed actually defeats the main purpose for which tampons are used.
Prior art deals with the problem of leakage of menstrual blood through the tampons, some inventions by providing additional blood reservoirs to the tampons, some others by increasing the tampons absorbing capabilities by the means of improved absorbing material, and others by using absorbing pads to apply in correspondence of the vaginal orifice to capture the blood escaped from the tampon. In all such cases, main object of the prior art is rather to minimize and possibly delay the outflow of blood, rather than reliably preventing the leakage of blood until it is the appropriate time for the woman, as determined by the woman rather than by her endometrium, to permit exit of the menstrual blood from the vaginal orifice. No known catamenial device has been disclosed to provide means of preventing leakage of menstrual blood by entailing the use of an intravaginal balloon.
Another group of catamenial devices introduced for the purpose of avoiding leakage of menstrual blood are the menstrual cups. Indeed cup-shaped intravaginal devices for collection of mentrual blood are not new in the art of feminine hygiene. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,845,766 by Zoller, 3,626,942 by Waldron, 2,534,900 by Chalmers and 5,295,984 by Audrey all disclose a cup shaped menstral collector made of flexible material impervious to fluid inserted into the vaginal canal for the purpose of collecting menstrual blood and preventing leakage of blood form the vaginal orifice. These devices all suffer from poor ergonomic design. They are all bulky necessarily of large diameter, difficult to insert and remove. They all have a resilient circular rim that regardless of the material is made of is necessarily significantly larger than the diameter of the vaginal orifice they have to pass through during insertion and during removal. Regardless of the individual differences among the menstrual blood collector cups, the general design of all these devices makes their insertion into the vaginal canal an uncomfortable and difficult task. Removal of these devices is even more difficult and uncomfortable for the user than the insertion. Furthermore on their removal spillage of blood is a very frequent occurrence. Indeed none of the menstrual cups is provided with an effective simple sealable closure apparatus of the cup opening apt to prevent spillage of blood. A lot of expertise has to be learned by the user before effective insertion and removal of these device can be achieved and no matter how expert the user can become, the use of the above mentioned menstrual cups is unavoidably associated with poor tolerance during use, discomfort on insertion and removal and in general difficult application.
Zadini et al disclose in their patent application Ser. No. 08/391,342 an inflatable device for sealable closure of the vaginal canal as a standing alone device and as a device associated with an intravaginal tampon. In FIG. 5 of the above cited Zadini's patent an inflatable cup shaped member is described associated with a tampon. While this inflatable device offers advantages with respect to the priorly cited menstrual cups being undeniably capable of being inserted into the vagina and removed from it in an easy and comfortable fashion being deflatable still has the drawback of not being able to collect the blood escaped from tampon absorption and of allowing spillage of blood on removal as with all priorly cited menstrual cups.